KOCHI: The country is going through a period of greatest inequality in its history, noted journalist and writer P Sainath has said.
“This period is matched only by the Great Depression in the US in the 1920s. The top one percent of the population owns 58.4 percent of the country’s total wealth and the bottom 10 percent has a wealth of - 0.7 per cent. It means the latter lives in debt and it is for the first time that the figure has gone below zero,” he said.
Sainath held the neoliberal policies implemented in the country in 1991 responsible for rising inequality. “In 1991, India did not even have a single dollar billionaire. But, in 2016, the number stands at 94.”
Even though neoliberalism was introduced with claims that growth would ‘trickle down’ and ‘a wave would lift all boats’, the condition of the poor in the country has been progressively deteriorating. “India now stands at the fourth spot with regard to the number of billionaires it has but is at the 130th spot as per Human Development Index.”
He said one person - Mukesh Ambani - owns 0.5 per cent of the total wealth when the cumulative wealth of the bottom 30 per cent stands at zero. “The bottom 10 per cent owns - 0.7, the 10 percent of them has 0.2 per cent and the next 10 per cent has 0.5. If you add up, it comes to zero.”
Sainath said the composition of the legislature is also causing concern. “Of all the MPs in the country, 83 per cent are crorepatis.
The figure was 53 in 2009 and 32 in 2004. And all these pertains to self-declared assets to the Election Commission.” He was speaking at the inauguration of a seminar held as part of DYFI’s all-India conference at Cusat on Wednesday.
